A cost effective approach to intelligent battery packs

The increasing market demand for portable devices such as cellular phones, notebook computers and personal digital assistants has focused attention on one critical, common component-the battery pack. All portable equipment draws its operating power from a battery pack and more often than not these are constructed from rechargeable cells. A single charger design may required to recharge packs of varying capacity or even different chemistries. In many cases this means the charger is designed to recharge packs in a manner which is suitable for any pack option which may be presented to it-thus sacrificing performance for safety. The design of smart battery electronics encompasses much more than simply defining data and communication standards to be adopted by the user community. Any device proposed for this application should satisfy the practical requirements imposed by factors such as ESD and interconnect cost. The devices presented are optimized for this application in those respects as well as offering a variety of feature and packaging options to meet-the need of nearly any battery pack design